Excerpts from wrex.com:
A list of famous celebrities call Rockford home, and the Rockford Fire Department hopes to capitalize on some of those famous faces to help it build it’s force. 13 WREX went behind the scenes of a new commercial.
“Hello? fire department? Oh hi! I’m Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick!” Nielsen said as he roared up in a Rockford Fire SUV.
“Today we have Kimberla Lawson Roby who started us off this morning, we’ve got from Cheap Trick Rick Nielsen who’s agreed to do it and we’ve also got Sean Considine from the Baltimore Ravens, played in the Super Bowl,” said Jeff Kloweit, a recruiter for the Rockford Fire Department.
Kloweit is working to get more people from Rockford to become Rockford firefighters and he came up with an idea. A commercial featuring local celebrities.
So one by one, a New York Times best selling author, a Super Bowl champion and a rock star suited up for the camera.
“I actually gave a serious consideration to becoming a firefighter couple years ago but you gotta be under 35 years old and I got about a month to make up my mind,” said Considine.
There were some out takes, and a lot of laughs but every one of the local celebrities is serious about the message they’re giving.
“They have so many career options and this is certainly one of them. And how rewarding would it be to know that you rescued someone from a burning building,” said Lawson Roby.
“It’s a good occupation and recruiting is tough for anybody. I guess they’re getting a lot of people from out of town where there’s a lot of good people in Rockford to try and recruit,” said Nielsen. “I signed up, I’m a little old for the force.”
Rockford Fire expects about 1,000 people to apply for jobs at the department. The commercial should start airing soon and hopefully encourages those in Rockford to be among those applicants.
